The Blood River Fortress was a massive stronghold as sprawling as a petty kingdom.
No one could tally how many devils garrisoned this fortress, just as no one could count the demons that had perished outside its walls.
Every corner of the ramparts was blanketed in carcasses and gore, overrun by vile tumors of flesh and blood so thick that the fortress's original appearance was lost entirely.
These fleshy growths were neither devil nor demon, but hybrid fiends nurtured by the slaughtered remains of both.
Any creature venturing near them faced a gamble: perhaps a lethal toxin that exploded at a touch, a maw lined with razor fangs, or a flailing tentacle armed with barbs and suckers.
Whether you were demon, devil, or anything else, these abominations slaughtered all life indiscriminately; even if Archduke Zariel arrived in person, they would attack her without hesitation.
Even so, these vile fiends ultimately served the devils better. The devils held the defense of the fortress, while the demons had to feed mountains of their own flesh and blood to the monsters each day just to catch a glimpse of the ramparts.
The devils merely needed to periodically purge whichever repulsive beasts crawled up over the parapets.
Most devils spent their entire lives staring at the fortress's distant silhouette from afar. When they died, if luck favored them, a stray soul fragment might tumble inside, only to be disdainfully scooped up and shoved into the maw of some dretch guarding the walls.
Yet the liveliest part of the fortress was not the constantly besieged outer walls, but the innermost Merit Square.
It was a place devils loved and hated in equal measure, for so long as you slaughtered enough demons, every conceivable reward awaited.
Leading her two subordinates, Cambien and Monica, Melina entered this grand stronghold.
Normally, ordinary hell lords lacked the privilege to teleport straight into the Blood River Fortress. Only during its scheduled openings could lords who held territory use special teleportation arrays to travel here.
Ostensibly, this was to prevent demons from exploiting loopholes to infiltrate the fortress's interior, but every hell lord believed it was simply an excuse for the fortress to milk them dry.
Whenever teleportation access opened, lords still had to pay exorbitant sums in soul coins to jump directly in. Teleporting the three of them had cost Melina thirty thousand soul coins.
Monica, the erinyes, was still grieving over the expense. Her entire territory was worth a mere hundred thousand soul coins; spending thirty thousand on a transit fee alone felt like the sky was collapsing. Her new master was undoubtedly powerful, but she hardly seemed the sharpest knife in the drawer—she couldn't even manage basic arithmetic!
Monica couldn't help but speak up. "Master, there was really no need to throw away money like that! The handful of straggler demons we caught over the past few days won't earn us anywhere near thirty thousand soul coins in merit!"
Melina replied in surprise, "How could that be? Doesn't any random balor go for a thousand?"
Melina's journey to exchange merit was at Anbaixiu's behest. The Blood River Fortress had opened its teleportation gates ahead of schedule only because Anbaixiu had urged Zariel to do so, arguing that making the hell lords spend their reserves first would create prime demand for soul bank loans.
Zariel had seen no problem with the idea; since Mammon also endorsed it, she had decisively authorized access to the fortress.
No one knew how many demon corpses Anbaixiu had actually delivered to Melina. Still, she needed to play the part convincingly. Over recent days, she had ordered her subordinates to patrol the fringes of the Blood River battlefield, capturing stray demons until they filled several warehouses with remains. Thinking she had put on a sufficient show, she finally teleported over.
Yet here was Monica, insisting that all this wouldn't even cover the transit fee?
That didn't add up. The Blood River Fortress supposedly had standardized prices clearly posted, with demon corpses assessed by species, body part, and weight.
Just as Melina was about to ask, Monica pointed toward a registry counter not far away.
A massive, thick arm lay atop a blood-encrusted weighbridge. At a single glance, one could tell it had been hacked from a mighty balor.
A scar-covered cambion stood before the scale, anxiously awaiting his merit settlement.
It was obvious he was no hell lord, but rather an independent skirmisher scraping out a living across the Blood River battlefield. Whether he had scavenged the arm, looted it, or stumbled across a mortally wounded balor, who knew? One could only guess how much blood and sweat he had spent getting inside the fortress, but a balor's arm would fetch enough to make him a tidy little fortune.
A payout of thirty or forty soul coins was enough to transform this cambion's life. It wouldn't buy a domain, but it would easily outfit him in decent magical gear. Yet the dretch handling the registry scrawled casually across the ledger: "Severed paw of hell hound, poor forelimb condition, weight under one kilogram..."
A hell hound! That was worth less than a tenth of a balor!
The young cambion shouted in fury, "Are you blind?! This is a balor's arm! And how could a whole limb like this weigh under a kilogram?! It weighs tens of times more than your scrawny sack of bones!"
The words had barely left his mouth when the unimposing dretch whipped out a lash and cracked it viciously across the cambion.
Following a shrill scream, the cambion's arm was severed clean at the shoulder.
The cambion had never imagined a mere dretch could sever his arm with a lash. Weren't these supposed to be the weakest devils in Hell?
The registrar dretch casually tossed the newly severed arm onto the scale and grunted, "Hmm. Now it's a full kilo."
With that, the dretch tossed out a few soul fragments and kicked the half-dead cambion flying.
As for the balor's arm, a mechanism beneath the weighbridge opened, dropping it down to be dispatched directly for sanitary disposal.
Despite such blatant extortion, not a single devil in the surrounding crowd raised an objection. They seemed entirely accustomed to it.
Only then did Monica turn back to Melina. "Master, how could anyone put blind faith in a devil's contract? In this fortress, even if you dragged in Demogorgon's corpse, they'd swear it was an illusion cast by a hell worm. A devil's greed knows no bounds."
This rampant corruption was why Monica felt certain this trip would be a financial disaster. The vast majority of hell lords came here only when they had to secure territorial titles. Even knowing they would be ruthlessly ripped off, they needed their official fiefs, so they gritted their teeth and let the fortress take its pound of flesh. Once they were established as lords, they focused on managing their own domains and rarely returned to exchange merit.
The devils here were utterly crooked, and with Archduke Zariel backing them, no one dared rob the robbers.
This came as a profound shock to Melina, who was not even two years old. Was this Hell? It was even harsher than the world of the undead!
As Melina stood gaping in disbelief, an unmasked sneer echoed from the side.
"Where did this idiot undead crawl out of? Daring to show your face in the Blood River Fortress... And how stupid are you two to be enslaved by an outsider? Why don't you come serve me instead? Oh, never mind the cambion, but you, erinyes—you might actually be useful."
Melina turned to look. It was a drider.
Many sinful souls that plummeted into Hell retained their mortal forms before having their bodies reshaped. Consequently, all manner of creatures from other planes could be found among the devils of Hell, whereas the abyssal demons tended to be far more uniform in form.
This drider was roughly Monica's size, covered in dark red runic markings. Likely, he had betrayed Lolth the Spider Queen before tumbling into Hell—otherwise driders rarely surfaced here. For a traitor to have escaped Lolth's retribution, he had to possess some real capability.
Monica whispered to Melina, "This drider is trouble, Master. We should keep our heads down."
Her caution stemmed mainly from the retinue behind him: over a dozen devils followed in his wake. Given how steep the fortress's teleportation fee was, anyone able to bring such a crowd had to be extraordinarily wealthy. And in Hell, wealth equated to power.
Melina asked Monica curiously, "Violence is allowed in the Blood River Fortress?"
Monica grew tense at once. Just as she opened her mouth to urge restraint, Cambien cut in. "As long as it's settled within one minute. If it takes longer, the fortress guard intervenes, and regardless of who wins or loses, everyone involved gets arrested and punished."
"Within one minute?" Melina asked again. "Dead or alive?"
Cambien said, "Dead or alive. But if someone dies, you have to pay a corpse disposal fee."
Melina turned back toward the drider. "Kneel. Or die!"
Cambien sneered at the arrogant drider. *That's what you get for looking down on cambions. You're dead meat!*
Chapter 537